Monitors (active or passive)?

[Bloodsoaked]

What is the difference between active or passive monitors? Is a powered monitor better than an un-powered monitors?


Peter

[jmarques]

Originally Posted by Bloodsoaked

What is the difference between active or passive monitors? Is a powered monitor better than an un-powered monitors?


Peter

Active monitor have built in amplifier design specifically for that monitor. Where as a passive monitor needs an amplifier. In a sense Active Monitor are better, because they are design for that monitor specifically. No underpower or overpower issue need to be debated here.

[Bloodsoaked]

Originally Posted by jmarques

Active monitor have built in amplifier design specifically for that monitor. Where as a passive monitor needs an amplifier. In a sense Active Monitor are better, because they are design for that monitor specifically. No underpower or overpower issue need to be debated here.

Thank you very much!!!

[BigRay]

Passives are better, IMHO..look at the size of the average audio amplifier used to drive a passive monitor pair...now look at the size of an active monitor. How many corners do you think they had to cut to squeeze the active electronics in there???

half the fun is matching monitors to amps anyway! actives are for lazy people.

[Bloodsoaked]

Damn, all this is confusing!!!

[DrJones]

but then there is fan noise. disturbs mixing.

internal amps are built perfect specs. to the speakers no noise


pro?

con?

[DrJones]

its really preference i guess.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Active, passive, who cares? At the amateur or prosumer level it's just hobbiest bar room debates. Great mixes and productions are madeevery day on both passives and actives, as are lousy mixes and prodcutions.

Once one builds a real control room or mastering suite that is more than just the half-assed home project studio that 99.9% of us on this board have (including myself), and once one has 4 digits or more in their budget for the monitoring chain alone, then one can start talking about matching great amplification with great passive loudspeakers for a combo monitoring system that'll blow away active monitors that come in at half the cost or less.

But if you're talking near field monitors at $1000/pair or less in a quasi-treated bedroom converted into a home project studio, it doesn't matter enough either way to even worry about it. Audiophiles might hear differences, but not enough to make a difference in the engineer's ability to translate their mixes to the real world.

Probably one out of every five professional mixes you've heard on the radio in the past 25 years have been at least partially (and some entirely) mixed on Yamaha NS10 passive nearfields which, regardless of the quality of amplifier they may have been wired to, sound like absolute horseshit to the trained ear. But it became a standrd in control rooms all over the world nevertheless, because engineers learned how to work with them.

Get yourself the best sounding monitors you can afford and start mixing. Once youre ears and skills are up to the task in a couple of years and are ready for something better, then you'll know where to go and what to get instinctively.

G.

[jmarques]

Well said SouthSide Glen!!

Just so everybody knows my monitors are active btw and there are no fans on them but they did cost me twice as much as the passive ones.

But are they better? Well if I had to do things over again I would have built my mixing room first and than bought a nice set of nearfields.

Because once I moved them from my basement rec room into my new mixing room. The same speakers sounded totally different and that's a bad thing. I would have rather started with a crappy pair of speakers, but in a consistent listening environment.

Two books you should get if you decide to every build a room:
"Sound Studio Construction on a Budget "
"Master Handbook of Acoustics"

both are by the author F. Alton Everest

Go for the room and then the speakers!!